In honor of International Women’s Day, we’d like to introduce you to some amazing talent that makes client success happen at CrucialLogics. We have made it a mission to hire more women in tech, and we are extremely proud of the women who have chosen to bring their skills and expertise to our team.
Meet Nisha Sharma
Nisha is a Senior Consultant who has worked at CrucialLogics since 2018. She has a two-year certificate in IT Infrastructure from Humber College and has helped in various architecture roles at other IT companies. When she started at CrucialLogics she started by shadowing other consultants to configure bits and pieces in the Microsoft Azure environment. However, after one year, she was promoted to senior consultant and now runs her own projects to configure and build Azure environments. She has developed her main expertise in security policies and cloud protection.
Nisha really enjoys the environment at CrucialLogics. “CrucialLogics is like a family. I have worked at other companies, and they do things that do not make you feel empowered, like giving you restricted permissions to access resources. But here, I am provided with a platform to learn more and develop my skills. I get to learn new technology all the time”, says Nisha.
In addition to this, Nisha says the team shares experience, which is crucial to growth and development. One of the main reasons that so many women leave the tech sector is because they do not have access to mentorship or sponsorship and so they don’t see growth or opportunities for their career and get frustrated and leave. Because of the way that CrucialLogics builds teams with their consultants, Nisha feels she has been able to get the support she needs to develop and grow in her job.
Meet Kathy Li
Kathy has been at CrucialLogics for two years and works in the area of Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM. Kathy started as an accountant and quickly realized that a job in computer science would be much more interesting, so she went back to school to study computer and cloud-based accounting. Kathy has worked in Academia and Government but agrees that CrucialLogics is a great environment and she enjoys being an IT consultant who gets to try different approaches to finding the ideal technology solution for a business. She has also loved the environment at CL, where she gets to work from home and no longer wastes time commuting. It has allowed her to get more done, be more productive and learn more in the process.
“In many environments, I have worked in IT, people don’t like to share. They keep information to themselves, and it’s a very competitive environment. This is not the case at CrucialLogics. People are invested in your success, and so they help each other out,” says Kathy. “I think this is why we are successful and why this is a great place to work.”
Meet Sasha Bogopolskaya
Sasha is one of the newest members of the CrucialLogics team, and she is an Associate Consultant who works mostly on Office 365, Exchange and Skype. Her main role is to support migrations for things like Exchange on premise to Exchange in the cloud. Originally from Moscow and a lawyer by training, Sasha never practiced and went immediately into IT. When she moved to Canada, she was not working in IT and took time to educate herself again and get up to speed on new Microsoft technologies.
She really enjoys working at CrucialLogics because of the freedom; freedom of ideas, freedom to new things, and freedom in the work environment.
“We are supported by our management team, and they don’t micromanage us,” says Sasha. “It means we can develop ourselves. I don't have fears about doing something wrong. If I do, it gets corrected, but that is not held against you, so you are not limited in the work you are doing.”
Creating the right environment
The team environment that has been created at CrucialLogics is an important cornerstone to attracting women to the company and to IT in general. The ability to share knowledge and experience is what helps people grow and progress, and this is very important to Nisha, Kathy and Sasha.
In the 2020 Action Plan Report developed by Women Talk Tech, many women in IT have identified that there are four main considerations that IT companies need to address in order to attract and support women in their companies:
- Recruitment practices
- Mentorship and Sponsorship
- Workplace environment
- Pay Equity
On all four fronts, Nisha, Sasha and Kathy agree that CrucialLogics is doing a great job. They feel the ability to learn and grow in a supportive, flexible environment is one of the main reasons they were attracted to the company, and this has held true throughout their time with the company.
The importance of mentorship
All three women credit people inside and outside of the company for helping them move their IT careers forward. Specifically, Sasha credits her husband, who mentored and encouraged her to get a degree in IT.
“It’s not easy when you are married and have a family, and one spouse needs to support the other in order for them to go back to school and get the education they need to excel in the IT field,” says Sasha. “Everything changes so quickly, so being up to speed means long days at school and studying non-stop just to get your first job. Not everyone or all families are up to this challenge. I am grateful my husband supported me and encouraged me to do this.”
Nisha acknowledges that workplace flexibility is key to attracting more women to tech. Being able to start part-time or job share means that women can continue to be caregivers without the stress of 60-hour work weeks. At the same time, Nisha, Kathy and Sasha acknowledge that not all employees in tech are this flexible or accommodating and that this could be the key reason the number of women in tech is still less than 25%.
“Most women are still the primary caregivers to children and parents,” says Nisha, “and that really limits our ability to make career decisions because a lot of time you're being asked to work long hours, and you're not going to move up the food chain if you're not perceived to be putting in 110%. Companies that acknowledge this and create an open environment to learn will not only attract more women but end up being a being a better place to work for everyone. And when that happens, employees win, and so do clients.”
Happy International Women’s Day!
So, here’s to all women in tech on International Women’s Day 2020. If you are a tech company that wants to learn best practices on how to attract more women to your business, check out the 2020 Action Plan published by Women Talk Tech the Podcast and speak to the team at CrucialLogics about some of the best practices they have deployed to advance women in tech.
